Meta told it's violating EU law by not doing enough to keep children off Facebook and Instagram

The European Commission issued preliminary findings that Meta violated the Digital Services Act by failing to prevent under-13s from accessing Instagram and Facebook, determining that minors can create accounts by inputting false birth dates with no verification controls in place and that the tool for reporting a minor's account requires up to seven clicks with inadequate follow-up measures. If confirmed in a final investigation, Meta faces fines of up to 6 percent of its total worldwide annual turnover.

Age-gate mechanisms that restrict access by date of birth push the compliance burden onto the child and displace the risk rather than addressing it. Guardii's anti-grooming and anti-sextortion detection operates after a child is online, identifying predatory patterns in direct-message conversations in real time and blocking or flagging hostile contact before it reaches the target, surfacing a child in crisis to a parent or authority without requiring the child to self-report or navigate a multi-step complaint form, addressing the underlying exploitation that occurs regardless of the age declared at account creation.